FR: Improve External and Network Volume Indexing

[salmanuc]

1. Allow Explicit Inclusion of Volumes

Currently, Cardinal appears to use an “index all volumes, then exclude unwanted ones” model.

This makes it difficult to index a NAS share while avoiding indexing every USB drive, SD card, backup disk, or other removable volume that may be connected.

Requested behavior

Allow users to explicitly select which volumes should be indexed.

Examples:

• Macintosh HD ✓
• NAS Share ✓
• External SSD ✗
• Time Machine Disk ✗
• USB Flash Drive ✗

This inclusion-based workflow would be much easier to manage than maintaining an exclusion list.

2. Persist Indexes for External and Network Volumes

Currently, when an external or network volume disconnects, Cardinal should retain its index rather than removing it or requiring a complete rebuild when the volume reconnects.

Requested behavior

• Keep the index database associated with a volume after disconnection.
• Identify volumes using a stable identifier (UUID, volume UUID, SMB share identity, etc.).
• When the volume reconnects, reuse the existing index.
• Perform an incremental scan for changes rather than rebuilding the entire index from scratch.
• Mark results from offline volumes as unavailable until the volume reconnects.

Benefits

This is especially important for:

• SMB NAS shares
• External SSDs
• Large media libraries
• Archive drives

For multi-terabyte datasets, rebuilding the index after every disconnect/reconnect can take a significant amount of time and unnecessary disk/network I/O. Retaining the index and performing change detection on reconnect would provide a much better user experience and make Cardinal more practical for NAS-based workflows.

[revolving-leslie]

I agree with all the above. I am very impressed with Cardinal and am particularly interested in using it to index my NAS, so the above implementations would be very welcome for me.